Someone recently told me that every trip is a necessary part of the journey. I would have never guessed that my abortion experience 16 years ago would have birthed The Abortion Diary Podcast.

I woke up in a small room with 2 or 3 other women. I was sitting in a chair with a thick maxi pad between my thighs, and I was throwing up in a plastic, kidney-shaped basin. I was seventeen years old. It was the summer after my high school graduation. I just had an abortion.

While I was in high school I lived in a rented house in Yonkers, NY with my strict, Dominican parents and two younger siblings. My parents never talked to me about sex except to tell me not to have it. I didn’t learn about sex at school either. I had attended an all girls Catholic high school in Hartsdale, NY. A mousy woman with frizzy brown hair taught my “health” class. She was visibly shaking in front of our class of thirty girls when she tried to talk about sex. The bottom line was that I didn’t have the tools to keep myself from getting pregnant.